Bob Morris @ Mar 3rd 2008 21:20 - Category: Unfiled ;
Our foster cat gave birth to five kittens last night. They’re healthy, she’s no doubt greatly relieved to no longer have a midsection the size of a plump football. When the kittens are six weeks old, they’ll all go back to the no-kill rescue shelter where they will be adopted quickly.
Bob Morris @ Mar 3rd 2008 17:45 - Category: Unfiled ;
The Internet is now as essential to American education, employment, and productivity as grade school. If we want people to have any chance of building productive lives for themselves after they get out of jail, we simply must give them access to the Internet while they’re in jail.
Making prisons solely punitive with no chance of inmates learning job skills virtually guarantees a high recidivism rate. Is that what we want?
The rate of technological change is so fast now that after a few years in prison and you’ll come out seriously behind the curve. I spoke with a woman in about 2000 who had spent four years in prison on drug charges and upon release was seriously disoriented for a bit after she saw people talking on phones while walking down the street. She said she felt like she was on a different planet.
Would some inmates try to use the net for mischief? Probably. So it would need to be locked down some (no porno, etc.) but maybe at least some of them would learn skills that would get them jobs, which would make things safer for the rest of us, and save money too.
Bob Morris @ Mar 3rd 2008 16:10 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Chavez, Columbia, Venezuela;
Chavez warns of war with Colombia.
Dead rebel’s laptop shows Chavez is funding rebels, Colombian police say.
Bob Morris @ Mar 3rd 2008 15:49 - Category: Unfiled ;
Fires gutted four multimillion-dollar model homes in a Seattle suburb on Monday, and authorities found a sign purportedly left by eco-terrorists that mocks claims that the homes were environmentally friendly.
“Built Green? Nope black!” said the spray-painted sign that bore the initials of the radical environmental group Earth Liberation Front.
Yeah, that’s right. Burn down homes that were deliberately built to be green and environmentally friendly. You say the homes might have polluted a creek? Well, what about all the runoff from the firefighting that’ll be flowing into the creek now because you torched the homes? That’ll be sure to help. And bring more people to your cause as well. Idiots.
Bob Morris @ Mar 3rd 2008 14:51 - Category: Credit crisis Tags: Thornburg Mortgage;
Thornburg Mortgage Inc. lost more than half its market value after the home lender failed to meet $270 million of margin calls and a Citigroup Inc. analyst said bankruptcy is possible.
If a company can’t make a margin call, it means they have no available money and nothing to sell to try to raise the money. No one sane would enter into a mortgage deal with Thornburg now so any business they still had has evaporated.
Bob Morris @ Mar 3rd 2008 14:15 - Category: Socialism ;
Bob Morris @ Mar 3rd 2008 13:33 - Category: Unfiled ;
Uh huh, the government is here to help farmers track their animals, strictly for disease prevention purposes only. Right. And the program is voluntary, except that it isn’t.
Only a paranoid would think the government might use this as a test before tagging and tracking humans.
PS Brian Finoki of Subtopia tells me that some prisoners and corporate employees already are tagged. Ok, so when will the first cloned or hacked tags appear? Or have they already?
Bob Morris @ Mar 3rd 2008 10:04 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Hartford;
Hartford CT has been struggling for decades. One big problem is that people and businesses leave, moving to nearby, vastly more prosperous suburbs. Since Connecticut has no county governments or regional authorities to spread money around, Hartford gets no help from anywhere should, say, a big insurance company move to the town next door.
So Hartford has to get money somewhere. And unfortunately, that means through extremely high property taxes. Which just drives more people and business out.
Hartford property taxes are the highest in the state by far, with a nosebleed rate of $64.8 per thousand dollars of assessment per year. Nearby towns with vastly better services have substantially lower (but still steep) property taxes.
It’s a death spiral. The exodus out of Hartford means higher taxes for remaining property owners, causing some of them to leave, and the situation continues to worsen.
A two or three unit apartment building in Hartford might cost $150,000 and get you $750 a month in rent per unit - but property taxes could easily total $600 a month, with no assurance they won’t rise. A similar building a few miles away in upscale West Hartford might cost $100,000 more, but the property tax rate is 30% less and you could probably get $1,300 a month in rent per unit. It’s easy to guess where most investors will put their money.
Hartford is like a boxer who absorbs crushing punches and keeps going, even as the knees wobble a bit. But if you’re continually on defensive, there’s no time to make a new move or mount a new attack. A decaying core city surrounded by a circle of better-off areas happens too often in the US. So, how does the urban core of a city like Hartford get revitalized?
Bob Morris @ Mar 3rd 2008 07:29 - Category: Unfiled ;
This is perhaps Steve Earle’s signature song. It’s about a Vietnam vet, his grandaddy and daddy were bootleggers, but he had new ideas.
I volunteered for the army on my birthday
They draft the white trash first round here anyway
served two tours of duty in Vietnam
and I came home with a brand new plan
take seed from Columbia and Mexico
plant it in a holler up Copperhead Road.Now the DEA’s got a chopper in the air
and I wake up screaming like I’m back over there
learned a few things from Charlie, don’t you know
Better stay away from Copperhead Road.
Bob Morris @ Mar 3rd 2008 03:08 - Category: Unfiled Tags: terrorism;
We’re at the muppet stage now, the more clueless than not terrorist wannabes rather than the cold, hard zealots who came before them.
Sageman’s policy advice is to “take the glory and thrill out of terrorism.” Jettison the rhetoric about Muslim extremism — these leaderless jihadists are barely Muslims. Stop holding news conferences to announce the latest triumphs in the “global war on terror,” which only glamorize the struggle. And reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq, which fuels the Muslim world’s sense of moral outrage.
That’s how to end it.
Bob Morris @ Mar 3rd 2008 00:21 - Category: Credit crisis ;
Everybody wants to help keep people in their houses and out of financial stress and foreclosure, right?
Nope. Some banks that hold second mortgages are blocking all re-fis on a first mortgage, probably because they are afraid of a drop in the property value and would prefer the owner be forced to sell, thus hoping they will get their money back quickly.
This is yet another example of how nobody trusts anyone anymore in the credit markets.
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